The General Social Survey is not a panel survey. However, it is both a very long-running with a large and diverse set of participants, and while the survey contains nearly no personally identifying information some basic demographic information is included in the data. Because both “age of respondent” and “year of survey” are provided, some basic manipulation of the data gets it to a place where we can use birth year as a unit of analysis.

For the sake of sample size, I created a

A screenshot of an excel sheet of sample sizes.

A screenshot of an excel sheet of sample sizes.

import pandas as pd
gss_frame_1 = pd.read_csv('fp_gss_1.csv')
gss_frame_1['year_of_birth'] = gss_frame_1.year - gss_frame_1.age
gss_frame_1['yearborn_binned5'] = (gss_frame_1.year_of_birth // 5) * 5 #rounds year born to nearest 5-year interval
print(pd.crosstab(gss_frame_1.yearborn_binned5, gss_frame_1.year))
## year              1972  1973  1974  1975  1976  ...  2010  2012  2014  2016  2018
## yearborn_binned5                                ...                              
## 1880.0               4     1     0     0     0  ...     0     0     0     0     0
## 1885.0              12     3    12     8    13  ...     0     0     0     0     0
## 1890.0              33    15    23    24    25  ...     0     0     0     0     0
## 1895.0              64    55    38    45    47  ...     0     0     0     0     0
## 1900.0              81    69    73    44    68  ...     0     0     0     0     0
## 1905.0              98    98   106   111    81  ...     0     0     0     0     0
## 1910.0             119   108    83    94   102  ...     0     0     0     0     0
## 1915.0             136   129   113   100   115  ...     0     0     0     0     0
## 1920.0             160   127   129   111   122  ...    40    22     0     0     0
## 1925.0             157   122   110   120    93  ...    53    44    53    34    29
## 1930.0             111   122   125   126    95  ...    67    58    62    67    49
## 1935.0             133   167   137   126   124  ...    71    85   116   116    49
## 1940.0             175   135   149   141   161  ...   134   105   127   116   110
## 1945.0             187   178   178   174   179  ...   148   146   160   193   161
## 1950.0             138   165   171   180   166  ...   194   151   208   224   174
## 1955.0               0     6    31    81   102  ...   185   172   262   304   192
## 1960.0               0     0     0     0     0  ...   184   190   249   274   209
## 1965.0               0     0     0     0     0  ...   191   163   189   239   186
## 1970.0               0     0     0     0     0  ...   171   192   228   219   174
## 1975.0               0     0     0     0     0  ...   188   181   233   226   215
## 1980.0               0     0     0     0     0  ...   186   198   254   253   226
## 1985.0               0     0     0     0     0  ...   171   149   218   267   212
## 1990.0               0     0     0     0     0  ...    58   113   139   226   196
## 1995.0               0     0     0     0     0  ...     0     0    31    99   137
## 2000.0               0     0     0     0     0  ...     0     0     0     0    22
## 
## [25 rows x 32 columns]

The motivating question for this project was initially this: Do we get more conservative as we get older? That’s the sort of thing that seems to be common knowledge, with the line “If you aren’t a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart, but if you aren’t a middle-aged conservative, you have no head” often being quoted (and misattributed to Winston Churchill) by conservatives. But in 2014 The Upshot blog at the New York Times presented a theory of “formative events” shaping the political beliefs of generations, which remain stable over time. Further, it could be that people’s views actually don’t change that much, but are perceived as more conservative to newer generations which are increasingly liberal.

To test this I took the five-year birth cohort bins and plotted the mean of their answers to the “Political Views” question, which indicates the respodent’s self-evaluated place on a seven point scale traveling between “Very Liberal” (1), “Centrist” (4) and “Very Conservative” (7). These evaluations are fairly coherent and consistent in terms of their meaning.

Well, that seems pretty straightforward.

That individuals are self-reporting a greater rate of conservatism as the move further along in life likely means one of two things: One, people change their beliefs over time and actually do get more conservative, or two, somewhat less likely in my opinion, people as they get older perceive the world around them as shifting leftwards. That is, the same set of views that would have been called liberal in 1980 are conservative in 2010.

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